Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says

[Lakhota]

By Daniel Lippman

WASHINGTON -- As Republicans search for reasons why they came up short in Tuesday's elections, anonymous Mitt Romney advisers have described what it was like to be with the former governor as he came to terms with his loss.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser told CBS News.

Another unnamed senior adviser explained that as returns came in and battleground states went into President Barack Obama's Electoral College column, they felt their paths to potential victory narrowing. CBS reports that the campaign was unprepared for this in part because it had ignored polling that showed the races favoring Obama. Instead, it turned to its own internal "unskewed" polls, which it believed more accurately reflected the situation on the ground. They didn't.

On the eve of the election, a number of polling aggregators, including HuffPost's Pollster and New York Times' FiveThirtyEight, showed Obama with a huge statistical advantage over Romney.

When it was clear that Romney had lost the race and had to concede, his personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart in the Obama campaign, Marvin Nicholson, to connect the two men.

As CBS' Jan Greenburg writes in her article:

More: Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says

 

[Dreamy]

Another unnamed senior adviser

*eye roll

The worst kind of journalism.

 

[uscitizen]

I hope he does not have a breakdown. After all he is so fragile.

 

[EriktheRed]

This really is remarkable. When I heard the bravado from the candidate and his aides going into Tuesday, I assumed it was just the usual p.r. palaver. But it appears they weren't spinning, hoping to sell talking points they didn't themselves believe; they were actually, genuinely clueless. Romney himself, one advisor told CBS, "was shellshocked."

Putting aside every other consideration, the question Republicans should be asking this week is how the campaign could be this incompetent. It's one thing to have a couple of blind optimists in the inner circle, confident in the face of contrary evidence; it's another to have everyone in the inner circle be so blind.

And how, exactly, did the entire campaign operation fool themselves into believing victory was inevitable? How is this dynamic even possible in an environment in which experienced, well-paid, professional operatives have access to quantifiable evidence?

According to the CBS report, Team Romney was swayed by, among other things, "huge and enthusiastic crowds," which they took as evidence of national enthusiasm.

Oh my.

No one on Team Romney 'saw this coming' - The Maddow Blog

 

[HUGGY]

Expecting a Morman to be a critical thinker? That's rich.

And to think nearly half the population wanted this idiot to have the codes to nuclear arms.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says

.....As if some CHICKENHAWK would recognize "shellshock" (presently PTSD).

Neocons; tryin' to sound like one o' the boys...​

 

[auditor0007]

By Daniel Lippman

WASHINGTON -- As Republicans search for reasons why they came up short in Tuesday's elections, anonymous Mitt Romney advisers have described what it was like to be with the former governor as he came to terms with his loss.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser told CBS News.

Another unnamed senior adviser explained that as returns came in and battleground states went into President Barack Obama's Electoral College column, they felt their paths to potential victory narrowing. CBS reports that the campaign was unprepared for this in part because it had ignored polling that showed the races favoring Obama. Instead, it turned to its own internal "unskewed" polls, which it believed more accurately reflected the situation on the ground. They didn't.

On the eve of the election, a number of polling aggregators, including HuffPost's Pollster and New York Times' FiveThirtyEight, showed Obama with a huge statistical advantage over Romney.

When it was clear that Romney had lost the race and had to concede, his personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart in the Obama campaign, Marvin Nicholson, to connect the two men.

As CBS' Jan Greenburg writes in her article:

More: Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says

This is not Romney's fault as much as it is his advisers, campaign managers, conservative pollsters, and the conservative media. None, and I mean none, of them understood the electorate. George Will, whom I normally have a decent amount of respect for swore that Romney would win with over 300 electoral votes. He was just one of many.

 

[Political Junky]

Surrounding yourself with people who tell you only what you want to hear is not something smart folks do.

 

[auditor0007]

I hope he does not have a breakdown. After all he is so fragile.

I'm sure he will survive. While his ego took a beating, he still has all his money. I do imagine this is the last we will see of Mitt though. The Republican Party will now head in a new direction, most likely thinking they weren't conservative enough, they will double down on tea party policies, and it will send them reeling even further. Eventually they will wake up though. All Republicans need to remember from this election is that Richard Lugar was the problem, not Richard Mourdock.

 

[EriktheRed]

By Daniel Lippman

WASHINGTON -- As Republicans search for reasons why they came up short in Tuesday's elections, anonymous Mitt Romney advisers have described what it was like to be with the former governor as he came to terms with his loss.

"He was shellshocked," one adviser told CBS News.

Another unnamed senior adviser explained that as returns came in and battleground states went into President Barack Obama's Electoral College column, they felt their paths to potential victory narrowing. CBS reports that the campaign was unprepared for this in part because it had ignored polling that showed the races favoring Obama. Instead, it turned to its own internal "unskewed" polls, which it believed more accurately reflected the situation on the ground. They didn't.

On the eve of the election, a number of polling aggregators, including HuffPost's Pollster and New York Times' FiveThirtyEight, showed Obama with a huge statistical advantage over Romney.

When it was clear that Romney had lost the race and had to concede, his personal assistant, Garrett Jackson, called his counterpart in the Obama campaign, Marvin Nicholson, to connect the two men.

As CBS' Jan Greenburg writes in her article:

More: Mitt Romney 'Shellshocked' After Lost Election, Adviser Says

This is not Romney's fault as much as it is his advisers, campaign managers, conservative pollsters, and the conservative media. None, and I mean none, of them understood the electorate. George Will, whom I normally have a decent amount of respect for swore that Romney would win with over 300 electoral votes. He was just one of many.

Pretty much the whole wingnut media had it wrong. Did you see that mash-up on The Daily Show about the FOX News meltdown and all the personalities on there predicting left and right a Romney victory? Funny stuff.

 

[Nova78]

 

[EriktheRed]

What's BS, wingnut?